Her rivalry with the sexually voracious Joan Crawford caused increasing tension
at MGM. "I ended up loathing Joan," says Page. "For one thing she tried to hit
on me several times. Let me tell you, when my mother saw the sex aids in various
shapes and colours that Joan kept in her medicine cabinet, she refused my ever
seeing Joan again - apart from on a film set."

Paid.
MGM, 1930. Directed by Sam Wood, 80 minutes. Joan stars
as ex-con "Mary Turner," wrongly accused and now out to get revenge,
with the help of her gangster friends, on the powerful men who
set her up. Based on the 1912 play "Within the Law" by Bayard Veiller,
two silent film versions were made with that name: in 1917 (starring Alice Joyce)
and 1923 (starring Norma Talmadge). This time around, MGM star (and wife of
MGM production head Thalberg) Norma Shearer wanted the part, but became pregnant,
so Joan took over. Says Joan in CWJC: ...my first really heavy dramatic role, and I did a good job, a damned good
job, thanks to Sam Wood and a script by Charlie MacArthur.

Palance,
Jack. (2/18/1919 -11/10/2006) Born "Vladimir Palaniuk" in
Pennsylvania, Palance, whose father was a coal-miner, had a
boxing career in the '30s and '40s before serving in WWII, where
a fiery B-24 crash forced extensive facial surgery, contributing
to his odd looks.

After
the war, Palance turned to acting; he made his
film debut in 1950's Panic in the Streets and co-starred with Joan in
1952's Sudden
Fear.
(Only his third film, he received an Oscar nomination for his performance; he
received a second nom the next year for Shane.)

He
and Joan
didn't get along too well on the set, for various reasons: One, Joan initially
wanted the ageing Gable for the role of the young playwright Lester Blaine
and actually burst into tears when director David Miller suggested the offbeat-looking
and at the time unknown Palance (JCB);
secondly, not only was he moody and method-actorish on the set, he was also
busy pursuing co-star Gloria Grahame and didn't respond to Joan's advances.
After filming, he was quoted as saying about Joan: "Look, I don't want
any more squabbles with Crawford. I have my future to think about. She's difficult.
Unless she's handled properly she's lots of trouble. She's a woman and has to
have her way in everything." (DF)

He went on to a lengthy
film and TV career playing mostly villains in noirs and Westerns
(receiving an Emmy for 1957's TV performance in Playhouse 90's "Requiem
for a Heavyweight") and was most recently known for his performance as "Curly"
in the City Slickers movies of the '90s (receiving his only Oscar, for
Best Supporting Actor, for the first Slickers).

Pally Award.
According to Wikipedia,
Joan was the recipient of the 6th Annual Pally, given out byPepsico to employees
making "significant contributions to company sales." The award came
in the shape of a bronze Pepsi bottle, and Joan allegedly kept it in a place
of honor next to her Oscar for Mildred
Pierce.
(I'm assuming husband Al Steele, president of Pepsi, initiated this award, given
his propensity for calling people "Pally"...No info on the exact year
she was so honored.)

Palmer,
Betsy. (11/1/26 - 5/29/15) Born
"Patricia Betsy Hrunek" in Indiana, Palmer began her acting
career on TV in 1951 and is perhaps best known for her nearly 50
years of TV appearances, including a 10-year stint (1957 to
1967) as a panelist on "I've Got a Secret" (an episode
in '61 featured her and Joan re-enacting a scene from their 1955
movie, Queen
Bee),
as well as on later shows like "Knots Landing" and "Murder,
She Wrote." Movie-wise, aside from Queen Bee, her
most famous roles were probably in 1955's Mister Roberts
and 1980's Friday the 13th.

In
1960, she and Joan were two of the seven recipients of the Millinery
Institute of America's
"Golden Hat Awards." And in 2002, Palmer appeared in the
TCM Joan doc "The Ultimate Star," in which she talked
about Joan andJohn
Ireland's
hijinx on the set of Queen Bee.

Paris.
MGM silent, 1926. Directed by Edmund Goulding, 67 minutes. Joan plays "The
Girl," a denizen of the louche Parisian "apache" life whom a
young rich American (Charles Ray) falls in love with.Douglas
Gilmore plays her mean boyfriend, "The Cat."
Says Joan in CWJC: I did a lousy job...overacting like a simpleton.

Parker,
Suzy. (10/28/32 - 5/3/03) This
San Antonio-born/New Jersey-raised supermodel was signed at age
15 by the Ford Agency (after the recommendation of her sister, model
Dorian Leigh) and went on to become the face of Chanel and one of
the highest paid, most photographed models in the world. She
made her acting debut in 1957's Funny Face and also appeared
in '57's Kiss Them For Me, as well as co-starring with Joan
in 1959's The
Best of Everything.
She married actor Bradford Dillman in 1963, a union that lasted
until her death in 2003. Her last acting job was in a 1970 episode
of "Night Gallery."

Parnell.
This
1937 MGM dud starring Clark Gable (considered his biggest flop
ever, losing over $637,000) as a 19th-century Irish politician
was initially slated to co-star Joan. After a disagreement with
director John Stahl (and disliking the script to begin with), Joan
switched assignments with Myrna Loy and appeared in The
Last of Mrs. Cheyney
(co-starring William Powell) instead. According to JCB, Gable was
furious with Joan over her departure; as a result, she also refused
to appear in Saratoga with him (Jean Harlow took over her
part in that movie). Joan and Clark didn't speak for nearly 3 years,
until they reunited in 1940's Strange
Cargo
(their last film together).

Parsons,
Louella. (8/6/1881 - 12/9/1972) The
world's first movie gossip columnist was born in Illinois, moved
to Iowa with her first husband, then after their divorce went to
Chicago, where she wrote for Chaplin's Essanay Studios before beginning
her first gossip column in 1914, for the Chicago Record-Herald.
When media mogul William Randolph Hearst bought the paper in 1918,
he fired Parsons, who then moved to NYC, where she had a column
for the New York Movie Telegraph. In 1922, Hearst, realizing
the error of his ways, hired her for his New York America
paper.

After
contracting TB, Parsons moved to Los Angeles for health reasons
in 1925, where she began her famed column for Hearst's Los Angeles
Examiner, which would eventually be syndicated to over 600 papers
worldwide, with a readership of over 20 million. (She also had a
radio show, beginning in 1928.) Parsons remained unchallenged in
gossip supremacy until 1937, when Hedda Hopper began her own column
in a rival non-Hearst paper, sparking a feud between the two that
would last for decades. Parsons' column ran until December
1965.

Parsons
had a role in at least a couple of major Joan-stories. In July
1932, Joan initially gave the scoop to her friend, Modern Screen
writer Katharine Albert, that she was divorcing Doug Jr. Since that
magazine was monthly, though, Albert had to sit on the story; in
the meantime, Parsons found out about the news and rushed to Joan's
house, forcing her to fess up then using Joan's own typewriter to
type up the column proclaiming their divorce, which appeared the
next day in Hearst papers everywhere. (DF)

Later,
in 1959 on the set of The
Best of Everything,
Parsons would get another Joan scoop, which appeared in the LA Examiner
under the head "Joan Crawford Flat Broke." (JCB) Here,
Joan revealed to Parsons that husband Al Steele, when he died, had
left her "up to my ears in debt, Louella. He expected his company
to reimburse me for the half-million dollars we spent on our New
York apartment. They didn't. Everything is going to pay his debts
and taxes...." When Pepsi execs protested to Joan that her
statement made the company look extremely bad, she issued a
disclaimer to the press; Parsons printed the rebuttal, but was privately
outraged. Later in her memoirs she'd write of Joan:

I
have known Joan Crawford for more than thirty-five years. I still
don't know her at all....She is the only star I know who manufactured
herself....She drew up a blueprint for herself and outlined a beautiful
package of skin, bones and character and then set about to put life
into the outline. She succeeded, and so Joan Crawford came into
existence at the same time an overweight Charleston dancer, born
Lucille LeSueur, disappeared from the world. It took me a long time
to realize this. I believed, for some time, that Lucille existed
under the skin.

Passing
Show of 1924, The. Musical revue produced by Lee andJ.J. Shubert that opened
on September 3, 1924, at Broadway'sWinter Garden Theatre, where it ran until
November 24 for 106 performances. It was Joan's 2nd show for the Shuberts (the first, "Innocent
Eyes"), and she
(as "Lucille LeSueur") was paid $35 a week for her work in the chorus, where
she played, among other things, a "Beaded Bag" and "Miss Labor
Day." Credits: Music by Sigmund Romberg and Jean Schwartz. Book and Lyrics
by Harold Atteridge. Directed by J.C. Huffman. (JB, eBay info)

Password.
Joan appeared on this CBS game show on December 16, 1962. See the 1960s
TV page
for more info and links to YouTube video clips from the show.

Pepsi-Cola.
Joan's 4th husbandAlfred Steele was president of Pepsi. She travelled extensively
with him to promote the company then, after his death in 1959, was appointed
to its Board of Directors. At the urging of new president and Joan-nemesis
Don Kendall (nicknamed "Fang" by Joan), Pepsi forced her retirement in 1973. Clickherefor a now infamous list of demands she made while travelling for them on business.

Pets
of Joan. In 1932, Joan was pictured with a pet Scottie.
While married to Franchot Tone ('35 to '39), the couple had two dachshunds,
Pupschen and Baby. (Another source says "Pupschen and Stinky.") Later, Joan had poodles named Cliquot, Camille, and Chiffon.
(She was photographed with Cliquot as early as 1950; Chiffon was 3 years old in 1958, as evidenced by a 2004 eBay auction
for a dog permit that Joan applied for on 3/10/58. Two of the poodles appeared with her on the cover of 1971's
My Way of
Life.) In her last years, Joan had a shi-tzu named "Princess Lotus
Blossom," which she gave away 2 days before her death.

Phone
Numbers of Joan.

According
to a letter to
a fan, her Los Angeles business number in 1950 was CRestview
670-71.

Pickford,
Mary. (4/8/1892 - 5/29/1979) For this site's purposes, Mary Pickford
was Joan's mother-in-law during her 1929-1932 marriage to Doug Fairbanks,
Jr. On a larger scale, though, Pickford was a groundbreaking actress and businesswoman,
by the late 1910s the highest-paid film star in America and most famous
woman in the world. She made around 236 films from 1909 until her film retirement
in 1933.

Some
notable "firsts": Pickford was the first film star to get a closeup
(in 1912's Friends); the first star to negotiate a percentage of
a film's earnings; the first star (along with husband Doug Fairbanks, Sr.,
Chaplin, and D.W. Griffith) to create a production company (United Artists,
1920); the first (along with husband Fairbanks) to place her hand- and footprints
at Grauman's Chinese Theater (4/30/27). In addition, she was also one of the
36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Pickford
was born "Gladys Marie Smith" in Toronto to acting parents and toured
with them beginning at age 6 as "Baby Gladys Smith." The family soon
moved to the States and Pickford's New York stage debut (and debut of her new
name) was in 1907 in David Belasco's "The Warrens of Virginia." She
began her film career as an extra in 1909 with The Heart of an Outlaw
after signing with D.W. Griffith's Biograph company, and soon graduated to leading
roles and great fame. Through the 'teens, she was most acclaimed for her
ringleted ingenue parts in silent films such as Tess of the Storm Country
(1914), Poor Little Rich Girl (1917), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
(1917), Daddy Long Legs (1919), and Pollyanna (1920).

In
1920, after a disastrous 9-year first marriage to troubled (i.e. "drunken"
and "drug-addicted" and "jealous") actor Owen Moore, she
married a star very much on her level--Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. The two would
only appear in one movie together (1929's The Taming of the Shrew), but
were renowned worldwide for their very fame and "couple-dom"
and entertainments at their Pickfair domicile (as well as their above-mentioned
groundbreaking business collaborations).

In
the '20s, Pickford attempted to establish a new, non-ingenue image for herself.
She cut off her ringlets and tried to take on more adult roles--to some
success, but her greatest fame was behind her. Her first talking picture, 1929's
Coquette, gained her a Best Actress Oscar, but didn't translate into
further popular adulation. She retired from films after 1933's Secrets
and, after her 1936 divorce from Fairbanks,
spent most of her subsequent time at Pickfair. (Pickford tried to make
a comeback in 1948, lobbying hard for the lead role in 1948's I Remember
Mama, which she lost to Irene Dunne.) In 1976, Pickford received an Oscar
for Lifetime Achievement.

In
1929, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. had married Joan Crawford (nee Lucille
LeSueur), a working-class girl. Although born in San Antonio, she spent
a good part of her childhood in Lawton, Oklahoma. The mother of the
future novelist Gore Vidal had been warned about playing with Lucille
because her mother was “light,” or sexually promiscuous.

“Joan was a little bit on the
wild side,” remembered William Bakewell, who made several pictures with
her before she met Doug Jr. “She was always dancing the Charleston all
night long.” She was frozen with terror at her first meeting with her
step-mother-in-law, even wearing an extra pair of panties, just in case.
“I didn’t kiss her hand, did I?” she anxiously inquired of her husband
on their way home.

During ritualized Sunday visits,
Crawford, a sharp-eyed observer of the Fairbanks/Pickford marriage,
reported that, “Exuberant Douglas would come whirling into a room, pick
her up and hold her high in the air while she laughed her girlish laugh
and cried, ‘Now Douglas, put me down.’ She was enchanting with him and
he was obviously enchanted with her. She had the manner and bearing
of a little queen.”

Although Mary’s background
was no more exalted than Crawford’s, there was no discussion of the
difficulties of Making It. When Doug Sr. would take Doug Jr. off to
the studio for a sauna, Pickford would simply retire to her room, rather
ungraciously leaving Crawford alone to rattle around Pickfair as best
she could.

Occasionally, Mary would allow
Gwynne [her niece] to bring Crawford into her room while she decided on her wardrobe.
Crawford, deathly afraid of saying the wrong thing, felt it necessary
to call her “Ma’am.” It is a measure of the distance Pickford wanted
to keep, a measure of her insecurity at having a younger, more vibrant
personality under her roof, that it was not until Crawford and the younger
Fairbanks had been divorced for years that she allowed Joan to call
her “Mary.”

When the men returned, Pickford,
beautifully gowned, would descend. “During the time of that marriage,”
Crawford wrote about her step-mother-in-law, “we never had a word of
conversation save in a group of people.” (Her then-husband had a somewhat
different memory of those times together: “Mary,” he remembered, “is,
in my memories, always the essence of gentle, hospitable charm. Whenever
we were asked to the house she did all she could to make the clearly
shaky young girl feel at home – just as she had with me.”)

The reason for the steely forbearance
was probably two-fold: Pickford appears to have subtly disapproved of
young Doug’s choice of a bride – Crawford was unlettered and unsophisticated,
with none of the satined panache Mary had grown to deem important
– and there was the worry that this interloper might give her the entirely
unwanted gift of a grandchild.

Yet, Mary had a more-or-less
positive influence on her step-daughter-in-law. “Joan was always a strict
disciplinarian with herself as well as her children,” said William Bakewell.
“She was determined to be as much of a lady as Mary. It’s my feeling
that the impetus to cross over and be a lady that began around this
time was all wrapped up in Joan’s desire to have Mary approve of her.”

On one of the rare occasions
when the two couples were together, Doug Sr. suggested a trip to a dance
marathon on Santa Monica pier. “A couple have been dancing seventy-eight
hours,” he explained.

“Douglas, love, you know we
can’t be seen in such a place,” Mary replied. Douglas Fairbanks looked
at the woman that he loved and said, “Hipper, love, the steel hand is
showing through your velvet glove.”

Pitts,
Zasu. (1/3/1894 - 6/7/1963) Star of over 200 films, and the
star of Joan's very first billed film (1925) Pretty
Ladies.

Plaza Art
Galleries. Auction house on Manhattan's East Side
(406 E. 79th St.) that sold nearly
1000 Joan items on February 16, 1978. The items were valued at $8,000, but brought
in nearly $43,000. Among the items sold were 80 pairs of her false eyelashes
for $300, and her personal autograph book, which brought $2,800. Click here
to read the 2/17/78 New York Times article on the auction
and see a sample authentication letter.

(Last
Years; New York Times)

Poetry
(by Joan). The first poem below appears in '62's Portrait of Joan autobiography.
She says she wrote it in between marriages to Tone and Terry, during a time when she
was also having an unsatisfactory affair with an unnamed married man. Says Joan
in POJ: Turning
your back on love spells loneliness. I cared for the babies and the days were
busy, but when they were safely tucked in their cribs, I'd wonder why God had
made me like this -- warm, loving, and so alone. I wasn't interested in the
quick romance-- there's no satisfaction in that. I wanted to marry, give my
children a father, go shopping for groceries, be part of the human race. I read
poetry. I even wrote poetry:

Where
are you?

My
heart cries out in agony,

In
my extended hands

I
give my heart with

All
its cries -- its songs -- its love,

But
it's too late.

You
are not here to see its sorrow

Or
hear its throbbing of your name

Perhaps
it's better that way

You
who love laughter --

Did
you ever know I love laughter too?

Oh
my beloved

Where
are you?

Here's
another poem, which was handwritten and sent to Dan Mahony in a
letter of 2/11/28:

I
am condemned for everything I do,

Even
for each and every little mood.

Everything's
wrong and nothing is right,

However
I guess that's all in life.--

But
there's one little thought that give's [sic] me great peace--

In
my own mind Im [sic] right at least.

And
another handwritten poem to Mahony, in a letter of March 1928 (all
spelling and grammar as in original):

Possessed.
Warner Brothers, 1947. Directed by Curtis Bernhardt, 108 minutes. Joan stars
as the emotionally disturbed "Louise Howell," a nurse for a wealthy
man's wife. Louise loves a self-centered engineer (Van
Heflin)
who spurns her and then starts hanging around Louise's employer's daughter.
Louise gets very, very perturbed... Joan won her second Oscar
nomination for this role, but lost that year toLoretta Young in The Farmer's
Daughter.

Says Joan in CWJC:

I think I worked
harder on "Possessed" than on any other picture I ever made. Don't
let anyone tell you it's easy to play a madwoman, particularly a psychotic.
I used to think so, that you just pulled out all the stops and acted either
manic or depressive and that was it. Both extremes have won, as you know, Oscars.
But it's the wrong interpretation of psychosis, believe me, and I realized that
just as we were ready to start production.

So
I pulled a few strings here and there so I could actually observe what went
on in psycho wards up in Santa Barbara and at hospitals in Santa Monica and
at UCLA. I talked to psychiatrists; one was even kind enough to read the script
and tell me how accurately it depicted a psychotic woman (for the most part
it was on the nose) and how he thought I should handle the difficult scenes.
I think it came off well. It was a heavy, heavy picture, not very pleasant,
and I was emotionally and physically exhausted when we finished shooting. I
don't think I'd have the strength to attempt anything like it again.

See
also the Guy
Maddin entry
for the Canadian cultish director's take on the movie as an example of "life uninhibited"
and on Joan's Medea-esque performance.

Powell,
William. (7/29/1892 - 3/5/1984) Born
in Pennsylvania, the suave Powell began his career on the New
York stage in 1912. He first appeared in British films, debuting
in 1922's Sherlock Holmes. He subsequently signed with Paramount
in 1924, then Warners in 1931, and finally MGM in 1934, where he
became a star with 1934's The Thin Man, which would garner
him his first Oscar nomination and spawn 4 sequels. (His other Oscar
nominations were for 1936's My Man Godfrey and 1947's Life
With Father, though he never won an Oscar.) His last film was
1955's Mister Roberts.

Preminger,
Otto.(12/5/06 - 4/23/86) The Austria-born Preminger worked as an
actor/director for Max Reinhardt's company in Vienna before making
his US directorial debut for 20th-Century Fox in 1936. His Oscar
nominations include 1945's Laura (Director), 1959's Anatomy
of a Murder (Picture), and 1963's The Cardinal (Director).
Other notable films: 1950's Where the Sidewalk Ends, 1955's
The Man With the Golden Arm, and 1962's Advise and Consent.
His last film was 1970's The Human Factor.

Preminger
directed Joan in '47'sDaisy Kenyon. Joan said of him in CWJC:
"Otto is a dear man, sort of a Jewish Nazi, but I love him..."

Presley,
Elvis. Joan
wrote Elvis a letter in March
1967,
thanking him for his, and Colonel Tom Parker's, kindness and mentioning
that Parker had given her an Elvis album (and the use of Elvis's
golf-cart while she was on the MGM set filming The Man from UNCLE).

In the book Elvis Aaron Presley: Revelations from the Memphis Mafia,
Elvis's cousin Billy Smith tells of an unpleasant encounter between Christina
Crawford and Elvis in 1961:

Christina Crawford, who had a bit part in "Wild in
the Country,"
came up to the house one night to see Joe Esposito. She's
Joan Crawford's adopted daughter, the one who wrote Mommie
Dearest. Elvis was smoking cigars that night, and every
time
he'd take one out, Joe would start to light it for him, and Christina
would reach out and grab it and break it.And Elvis said, "Don't do
that, that's not funny." So he picked up another one, and Joe went to light it again. And she broke it again. And
Elvis said, "I've
asked you nicely." She said, "Well, he shouldn't have to light your cigars"
and Elvis said, "Look he works for me goddammit, and knows when I get a cigar to light it for me."

But she did it a third time, and
boy Elvis got mad. They got into a barrage of words. Elvis said, "Look you bitch--" and Christina threw a drink in
his face. He stopped a
minute and then he said "I'm going to eliminate this problem." He got up
and stepped on the top of this five by six marble coffee table
we had and grabbed her by her ponytail and dragged her across the damn
table out of the room. Then he kicked her right in the rear as she
was going out the door. It wasn't but a short time later that
she came back up and apologized. She said the reason she'd done it was because she resented seeing her mother treat
everybody who worked for
her the same way.

Thanks
to Jeff Davidson for contributing this anecdote.

Pretty
Ladies. MGM silent, 1925. Directed by Monta Bell, 74 minutes. In her first
credited role, Joan has a
small part as "Bobby," a showgirl in the Ziegfeld
Follies, and is billed by her real name
of "Lucille LeSueur" for the first and only time. Says Joan in CWJC: ...I don't think I was
noticed by anyone.

Pucci
pants. Joan favored wearing these while on vacation in Capri, Jamaica, and
Barbados. (But otherwise, she considered pants strictly for the home. See theLouis B. Mayer entry for insight into what probably unleashed her horror!) (MWOL)

Pictured:
A pair of chartreuse silk Pucci pants from the '60s...such as Joan
might have worn!